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The Brits use the term “green-fingered” to mean what North Americans call “green- thumbed”. I think that’s kind of funny, actually! The Brits are big on gardening…just look at the huge gardening shows they do, like Chelsea, Hampton Court Palace, Tatton Park—all sponsored by the grand-daddy of the gardening authorities, the Royal Horticultural Society. Go to any stately home in Britain and one of the primary features of the property is the gardens and grounds. Add to that the multitude of gardening shows on telly and radio, such as Gardeners’ World and Gardeners’ Question Time and anyone might be led to believe that the Brits are somewhat Natural Born Gardeners. Or at least, slightly eccentrically obsessed with gardening!

I’m not so sure about the Natural Born Gardener thing. Both myself and Garry come from a long line of talented gardeners…my mother-in-law (bless her soul) could make a stick grow, and my parents (and both sides of grandparents) have always had a huge vegetable garden and fruit trees. One of my chores growing up was to help weed, as well as help to can and freeze fruit and vegetables. I hated it; I wanted to go swimming or something, not spend my summer in a hot, bug-infested patch of dirt!

But something triggered my own love of plants. I remember it was after high school, after a nasty breakup with a boyfriend. I just felt inexplicably drawn to wanting to create a garden; perhaps all that aggression was meant to come out in the hoeing and digging. Or perhaps I just wanted to nurture something, to create something beautiful out of the ugliness— aan appropriate metaphor for my psyche at the time. I don’t know for sure. But all of a sudden, I got my parents to help me pick out plants at nurseries, and wanted to try to grow anything—anything!—to see what would happen. I got the bug, bigtime.

I didn’t entirely have much luck but I enjoyed the creating of the garden. I found the early morning cool earth and the birdsong almost meditative. I started to slow down and notice the birds and bugs that inhabited the yard. And I began to realise what the attraction was.

After I moved over here, I didn’t do much with our little patch of ground. The soil was/is hard clay. The plants that I wanted to plant didn’t do very well. I compared my meagre efforts with the gardening shows and the neighbours and I got discouraged. I just stuck with a few pots dotted around. Besides, I didn’t have time to garden, with working full time and caring for a home. The slugs and snails sucked my petunias down to nothing. I got really discouraged.

And then this year, I wanted to plant some flowers in our beds. I decided to go for the cottage garden look. I figured that wildflowers would grow pretty much anywhere. It took ages for me to clear the layers of weeds from the beds and remove the big gobs of clay. I mostly did it when the weather was fine and J was napping; the two didn’t necessarily co-exist with each other so it took me weeks to do. I started too late in the season and my flowers haven’t bloomed into the rainbow of colour they were supposed to, so I’ll have to wait til next year. I keep looking in garden centres and thinking of plants to put in there; not all of my favorites, like Bleeding Hearts, will work in our cleggy soil. But I keep planning for my dream garden. Eventually, in one of my future homes, I’l have enough space for a magical “British” cottage garden with layers of plants in my beds, and perhaps a vegetable patch so I can show my son how plants grow and get him to taste a freshly-pulled carrot. I want to learn how to do those huge, pouffy hanging baskets that you see on pubs. I want to sit out on the lawn, stretched out with a good book, chatting with my husband and watching my child play in his little paddling pool. Bliss!

I look at the meagre attempt that I’ve started, and I sigh, and I plan for next year, hoping that somehow down the road, with lots of practice and hits-and-misses, I’ll finally hit on the magic formula for a nice garden, and the weather and the slugs/bugs will be kind to it and the gardeners in my family who have gone before me will look on my efforts and smile approvingly.

Gardeners are optimists….